How to drive sales & traffic to your brand new website

Picture this… You’ve just made your website ‘live to the world’. You sit with baited breath, waiting for the onslaught of traffic and sales. Hours, days, sometimes even weeks go by, yet you only get an underwhelming trickle of visitors. It can be very disheartening. When it comes to being successful online, having a website is only half the battle. To avoid less than stellar results you’ve got to be proactive and think about the bigger picture. If you’ve just launched your new website and aren’t yet seeing the amount of traffic you’d like, these 7 tips will help.

Search Engine Optimisation

If this hasn’t been considered in the design or development of your website, you’ve missed a trick. A great thing to do when developing a website is to work in long tail keywords. This way, when you launch the site it will quickly be spidered and ranked for those terms. Let’s define long tail keywords. Keywords are search terms people use on google, sites use them to show their relevance to the search engines and so get ranked and get in front of potential customers. A long tail keyword is a phrase that contains three or more words. Long tail keywords are used to target niche demographics rather than mass audiences. In other words, they’re more specific and often less competitive than top level keyword terms. Long tail keywords get less searches than short keywords and are usually less competitive as a result. If you haven’t considered keywords yet, don’t panic. Optimising your site for keywords is very easy to do. First, you have to find keywords you want to attempt to rank for. You can use Google’s keyword planner for this. When using the tool be sure to show results in ascending order by average monthly searches or by competition. You want to look for results with low searches and competition. Jot down any keywords that look promising. Then you can revisit the pages on your site and start reworking the content to include one or two of those keywords. We’re going to be sharing an article on beginner search engine optimisation tips very soon so if you’d like to find out more, hang tight! In the meantime, why not check out our other articles on SEO

Social Media

The next strategy to consider is building up a presence on social media. Firstly, it’s recommended to set up an account with those that are a good fit with your business i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest. Having an account on these platforms allows you to tap into a massive group of engaged people and even target the ones interested or looking for your product or service directly with facebook advertising (but that’s a subject for another article). Search engines now consider social media following and engagement high up on their list of factors when deciding where to rank a website, therefore not being on those platforms could hinder you. Here’s what Bing has to say about social media:

We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. – src Search Engine Land

Then it’s a good idea to go and follow other pages in your industry and start showing up by commenting and liking posts. Posting content is key to social media. An update a week is a good goal to aim for. These can be tips, blog articles, sharing posts from others that your audience might find useful, sales or offers and more. The aim is to get people off of social media and onto your website. However, it’s all about striking a fine balance. You don’t just want to be self-promoting and being overly salesy. Therefore, it’s a good idea to think about adding ‘value’ to your followers experience and provide content that fits that ethos.

Get out and about in the online community

Leaving comments, especially on blogs or niche specific forums is great for a number of reasons. Firstly, you usually have the option to include your URL, meaning you can get backlinks. And the second plus point is that you can get referrals, visitors who’ve seen your comment and want to find out more about you. Using this tactic long term could help you develop relationships with heavy weights in your niche which could provide opportunities for collaboration, guest posting and more. Getting active on related forums also positions you and your business as experts in your industry. If you’re answering questions and helping individuals with their queries, you build a relationship with them and they are more likely to come to you when they need a product or service as a result. How to find blogs or forums related to your niche? Search google for ‘your niche + blog’ or ‘your niche + forum’.

Advertising

Advertising on google is a great option for new businesses, while a new site and changes in SEO can take a while to be noticed by google, you can guarantee first page rankings by advertising. How does it work? Google lists websites relevant to user searches, this includes organic results and matching PPC adverts too. These paid ads show at the top and right-hand side of the results page. How can PPC help you? It increases your exposure and sends immediate traffic to your website. Getting specific by tailoring your ads ensures you only get qualified leads, you can even target different counties, cities, and even languages. All of these points together make PPC a fantastic option for many businesses (even those only dealing with local customers) and is a great way for you to kickstart traffic and sales on your new website.

Guest posting

Don’t have a thriving following yet? No worries, you can tap into someone else’s! Guest posting is a great way to position yourself as an industry expert, get backlinks from authority sites and get in front of a large, targeted and engaged audience. You benefit by getting traffic and backlinks, and the site owners benefit by getting free high-quality content. The quickest ways to find guest posting opportunities is by searching google for ‘your niche + blogs’. Check all of the blogs to see if they feature guest posting. Alternatively, you could search google for ‘your niche’ plus one of the following: ‘guest post’, ‘guest blogger’, ‘writers needed’, ‘write for us’

Utilise your list

If you’ve already got an existing list of customers subscribed to your mailing list, start putting together and sending them helpful emails, sharing the latest post on your blog, news, offers, new products and such. Not only will you keep coming up on their radar, but you’re sure to push some to your website. To continue to build your list it’s recommended that you set up a lead generation offer, which in essence is where you offer a free gift in exchange for a name and email. Building a list and a following on social media is great as it encourages repeat visitors.

Run a contest or promotion

Why not celebrate the launch of your new website by offering customers a special gift? This can be a percent off in your online shop, or the chance to win something by liking and sharing. This kind of technique is perfect for promotion on social media. To get some ideas on what you could do as an offer or competition/giveaway and how to best structure it take a look on Instagram for competition or giveaway. You could also send your promo to your email list too.

Conclusion

So, there you have it, our 7 tips to help you drive sales & traffic to your brand new website. Hopefully, this short guide has got you thinking about how you increase visitor and sales volumes on your site. If you would like to talk further about using social media or SEO, to drive traffic and sales to your website, (no matter it’s age) get in touch.

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